Brother and Sister
by Sevenstars
Summary: Before the McKittricks leave for California, Slim and Francie have a heart-to-heart about the brother they share.


**Brother and Sister**

_by Sevenstars_

SUMMARY: Francie Harper McKittrick and Slim Sherman, coming to a meeting of the minds about their mutual brother. Comes between the last act and tag of "Shadow of the Past." Beta by Noelle.

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Slim Sherman leaned on the poles of the corral in the cool of gathering dusk, thinking about what two people might need for a journey to California. A wagon, first and foremost; well, he could help there. He still had the one he and his family had come to Wyoming in, a good two-ton freight type—old, but still sound, he'd taken good care of it; they'd need it when they got where they were going, assuming they figured on starting a farm or a ranch, so they might as well have it now. Most of the grain he'd be using here, from now till fall, would be for the stage-line stock, and delivered by the company; in the remote event that he needed more than two or three sacks at a time for his own horses (which could go on the buckboard), or when it came time to cut their hay, he'd ask Reed McCaskey or Bill Bates for the loan of a wagon. He could wait till fall to buy a new one, after he'd sold this year's cattle—ninety, maybe a hundred dollars. Then there'd be horses; he couldn't spare Jimmy and Rusty, but you could get a good sound pair of 1100- to 1600-pound (depending on whether they were half or a quarter light blood) general-utility drafters for only forty dollars, and a span of decent full-length tug harness for as much again. Jess would want to kick in something, and he had an eye for horses; he could see to that. Supplies for two people from here to the Coast would run maybe $200, and there'd be camp gear, water barrels, maybe some more clothes, a couple of hundred rounds of ammunition for meat-hunting and in case the Paiutes or the Modocs started acting up...

"Aren't you cold, out here with no jacket on?"

He turned, knowing from the voice who it was. "Maybe you forget," he said with a smile, "I've lived in Wyoming since I was fifteen. If you think this is cold, you should be here in winter. I can tell you're a thin-blooded Texas Harper. Jess said somethin' very similar, the first evening he was here."

Francie McKittrick adjusted the blue merino shawl thrown over her shoulders; even in the dim light, he noted how well it went with her cinnamon-brown hair, bringing out the red highlights in it. "Guess I did forget," she admitted, with a half-embarrassed smile of her own.

"I didn't want to sit on the porch," he went on, " 'cause I figured you and Ben and Jess might have some family talkin' to do, and with that glass pane in the front door, besides the window, sound travels. Did you get Ben set up with a bunk?" They didn't have the right configuration of bed space for the McKittricks to sleep together, unless Daisy moved in with Mike, so she'd offered to share her bed (forrmerly Slim's parents') with Francie, and Ben would have a space in the bunkroom with Jess and himself, till they got themselves sorted out and ready to move, and Mort had made sure there'd be no trouble about the Keefers.

"It's all done. Mrs. Cooper took care of it."

"That's good. She's really pleased that you're here, you know. She sees how happy it makes Jess, and that makes her happy." _Might as well suggest it now, _he thought— _she'll know best how to bring it up with Ben._ "I'm thinkin'," he went on, "I've got an old freight wagon I don't use much any more—if you want it, it's yours. About time I thought of replacin' it anyway, it's a good fifteen years old, but well maintained—been kept under roof most of that time."

"Oh, Slim... you shouldn't feel you have to..."

"Not a question of have-to. It's a question of want-to. You didn't think I was figurin' on standin' by and lettin' Jess outfit you, did you?"

He heard her take a breath, then let it out again. "Hadn't thought much about it either way," she admitted.

"Jess is family," he told her. "That makes you two family. Why, if I didn't offer you somethin' for the trip, I'd be lucky to taste one of Daisy's apple pies before fall roundup, she'd be that furious. By the way, what brings you out here?"

"Well, Ben and Jess are talkin' livestock, and I—" She hesitated. "Fact is, I guess, I've been tryin' to get caught up with Jess, but with all that's been happenin'—"

"You thought, maybe, it made better sense to come to me?"

"Somethin' like that. There's so much business to get settled, and he's never been one to talk about himself anyway—unless he's yarnin'."

"I've noticed that," Slim agreed. "Sometimes it can be like pullin' teeth, tryin' to get a story out of him. He's got a way of lockin' his trouble inside himself and just flailin' away at the woodpile or throwin' himself into range work while he tries to get everything straightened out in his mind..."

"That's Jess," she said, nodding. "I can see you know him pretty well. Has he been with you long?"

"Three years and a bit. I made him a partner for his birthday this year, though he tried to dig in his heels about it—said he didn't feel he'd earned it, didn't have enough money to buy in. I said he'd already bought in—with his loyalty, his hard work, and his blood. And there was a reward we got, the second year he was here—it paid off the mortgage I had on the place—we'd never have had it, I'd probably have died, if it hadn't been for him. I reminded him of that and asked him if he didn't think a thousand dollars on a mortgage, his share that he could rightfully have kept if he wanted to, didn't count as a buy-in. He gave in then." He hesitated. "I'm not sure how much you know about... Gil..."

"_That_ he told me," she said. "I hadn't had any idea, till then, that he'd been within a hundred miles when it happened. I'd have gotten in touch, somehow, if I'd known, or at least I'd have tried—you believe that, don't you?"

"Yes," he said quietly, "I do. I've known for a long time that you must have been close."

"We all of us were," she agreed. "It comes of bein' thrown back on your own resources for company, probably; there were only ever maybe three or four other kids on the place, besides the Mexicans, and one of those—Avonia Maylock, I don't know if he's ever mentioned her, they were only a year apart and she could outshoot him with a rifle—she'd been sent off to school in Dallas the fall before; he'd been lookin' forward to seein' her come the summer..."

"He's spoken of her, though not as a close friend," Slim agreed. "He remembers her fondly, I think, even if she _was_ the better shot."

"Has he ever told you about... our family?"

He understood the code at once. "You mean about the Bannisters? Yes. It took him a good year to be able to trust us that much, but he did."

She sighed. "I'm glad. It's not good he should keep that kind of pain bottled up inside him. I told Ben." She looked down at her interlaced fingers. "Does he still blame himself for Billy and Davy and Julie?"

"That I can't say for certain. He doesn't speak of them much, or of that day any more. I think he felt that reliving it once was as much as he could bear. He still has nightmares about it, though not as many as he used to when he first came here. But the night he told me the story, he did say he reckoned he'd carry the guilt of that failure to his grave."

"You mustn't let him," she said forcefully. "It wasn't his fault, Slim. He tried to go in after them, but the smoke had already half killed him—Johnny too; I don't know to this day how I got the two of them out of the house, and by the time we made it to the yard the buildin' was—a bonfire. He'd have died. I could see it was too late, and I dragged him back—which I couldn't have if he hadn't had a double lungful of smoke. Losin' two little brothers was enough, I wasn't losin' a third." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "He grieved so, once we got to safety at the next place and he felt he didn't have to take care of us—of Johnny and me—any more. He scarcely spoke or ate for three days. He'd slip out after dark and sit there alone, cryin', mournin'. He loved them so much. He was such a _good _big brother..."

"I don't doubt it," Slim agreed. "I've seen him with Mike, and with my own kid brother Andy. It seems to be a job he was born to do—like protectin' us, which I think he takes as his mission in life."

"That would be like him," she said. "He was the oldest of the boys for so long, I think he just naturally grew into it. And then the fire... that would have made him all the more certain that he was obliged never to let anyone who was in his care die if he could prevent it." She paused a moment. "You've been good for him, Slim. You, and this place, and Mrs. Cooper, and little Mike. I can see it. There's a... a softness in him now, an open warmth, a sense of bein' at peace with himself, that I haven't seen since he was, I don't know, nine, ten years old. We all had to grow up pretty fast, of course, and the boys more than the girls—Jess was wranglin' horses when he was only ten—but after... after it happened, he changed. He turned so quiet, so still, so... so private and inward; there was somethin' alive in his eyes, but I couldn't reach it any more. He didn't have to say he was leavin'; I knew. I heard about him, now and then—that he'd partnered up with Dixie Howard, and then, after the war, that he'd begun to gain a name as a gunfighter. I never knew where he'd been till after he'd left—maybe if I had, I could have gotten in touch with him. I was afraid for him, Slim. After the fire I had three years to watch what it had done to Johnny. He'd always been wild and resentful, much more than Jess ever was, but I could see him turnin' bitter and angry and cold. I was afraid for what he'd do when he was old enough to get out on his own... but he never had the chance. I wondered if Jess had already gone the same way, out of grief and anger and his unfulfilled need to settle the score..."

"He did finally get Bannister, you know," Slim told her. "Or at least, he served as tracker and deputy to the U.S. Marshal who did it, with another man's help. He came home exhausted and shot up and not sure we'd want him back—it was the fourth or fifth time he'd taken off for weeks at a clip. He was kind of depressed, at first, knowin' that it hadn't been his bullet. But he worked it out. Up to then, we'd had a sort of month-by-month arrangement—he was still just a hired hand at the time. Afterward—well, we didn't say it, but we knew, afterward, that it was permanent. He was free, at peace; he could start livin' his own life at last." He reached across to lay a hand lightly on her arm. "And whatever you heard about him, you don't have to worry about him, not that way. I've seen him so white-hot mad he was ready to kill with his bare hands... but I've also seen him brought to tears. He's no stone killer, Francie. I can testify to that. He may have come close, but... always he kept from tippin' over. I've seen him so many times, faced with a choice between what's right according to his code and what's... convenient. Sometimes he struggles, but he almost always follows the right in the end. When he doesn't, like once when he got Andy to lie for him, there's always a good reason for it, at least in his mind; that time, he thought he was protectin' us... and at that, maybe he was."

"I can't say I'm sorry Bannister's dead," she said, her voice thin. "I hope he burns for what he did—it would only be just. But I'm not exactly sorry Jess didn't get to take him down, either. I know he wanted to, and he had a right, but I don't know if—if his soul could have stood it."

"He's killed his share, I guess," Slim admitted. "But I've never known him to take pleasure in it. He does it because he has to, to defend himself, or someone else." He remembered Roney Bishop and Jonesy's story of how Jess had killed him—killed the man who'd saved his life—because it was that or let Bishop kill Essie Bright; remembered the gunfight in this very yard when Jess had shot Dixie Howard, his mentor and former trail-partner, and how deeply it had wounded him to do it, even though he knew it had been down to Dixie or him, even though he knew—and admitted later—that Dixie would have preferred to die that way if he'd been given the choice. "It takes somethin' out of him every time, and he knows it does, so he doesn't hunt trouble. And for that very reason, I think, he'll never be what some fast guns become. I know he's got a name for ruthlessness, but I've never known him to push a quarrel, at least not with guns; he'll get in a brawl with his fists, in the saloon in town, when he's feelin' rough, but that's as far as he goes. You only heard about him when he was 'in the trade,' as he says; maybe you don't know how many times he dropped out of it—ridin' dispatch for the Army or shotgun for stage lines, goin' on at least two trail drives that I know of, ridin' rough string, huntin' mustangs, even tryin' once to make a go of a homestead claim. To me, that's always said that he didn't want the name, didn't look for it; that he learned to use a gun—use it _that_ way, I mean; he told me once he'd carried one since he was twelve—mostly because he knew he'd need it for Bannister."

He sighed. "In a way, it's too bad for him that he has that... gift. But since he's been here, more and more he's used it on the side of the right—for Mort Corey, for the stage line, for neighbors or people passin' through in trouble, for us. You don't have to worry about him, Francie. I don't say he's perfect—he's far from that. He's got a temper like a case of dynamite, though it's mellowed some these last years. He's stubborn as any mule I ever met. He's blunt, sometimes brutal, but on just that account, when you ask him for his opinion, you know you're gettin' what he honestly thinks, no fudging. And he can't seem to keep from jumpin' feet first into things that are none of his business, just because he thinks it's the right thing to do—though I guess I shouldn't fault him for that. But," he added quietly, "Mike and Daisy love him dearly, Andy at goin' on sixteen still thinks the sun rises and sets on him, and he's the best friend I ever had—and the best partner I could have asked for. He's a top hand, and the best man with horses or on a trail that I've ever seen, except an Indian or two. He's got a feel and a love for the land—I often wish my father could've known him, they'd have appreciated that in each other—and an instinct for people that I haven't seen equalled since my mother was alive; Pa counted on her perceptions, and I count on Jess's, more than he knows, maybe. There's not a selfish bone in his body—or a cowardly one either, except when it comes to dentists. He's capable of the most amazing compassion. He hates bullies on any scale. Rough as he's had it, he's never given in to self-pity—or cynicism; so many times he's stood up for someone he thought genuinely wanted a second chance, and even though he's been wrong a time or two, it never stops him from doin' the same again when he feels it's warranted. He's never shown me anything to make me think he holds any bitterness about the war, like a lot of men do who served the Confederacy. And as impossible as it seems after all he's been through, there's still a lot of little boy in him; sometimes I think he's not more than twelve years old. He can still laugh—even at himself—and smile, he can tease and joke and play pranks... before Andy went off to school in St. Louis, the two of them used to think up some of the most elaborate tricks—mostly on me, and I probably deserved it. He claims he's not 'smart,' but you should see the way he listens when I read aloud in the evenings—or last winter, when the weather was too bad for us to get out, sittin' at the kitchen table with Daisy, workin' on lessons just like Mike; he got all the way through the Fourth and Fifth and Sixth Readers in just those few months. His loyalty is... I think it's the thing about him that I most respect; trust doesn't come easy to him, but once he accepts you into his world, he's yours for all time—and you're his. He'll go any distance, take any risk, for anyone he considers a friend, or feels he owes a debt to. He'd give the last drop of his blood for any of us, or for this place. Even his stubbornness, aggravating as I've found it sometimes, has its magnificent side. I've watched him drag himself back from death's edge on sheer will. I've had it told to me—not by him—how he's walked out of country that would kill most men. I've seen him fight to leave his past behind, to make a new and better man of himself; I've seen him shaken, doubtful, close to despair, but he never gives up. And he's changed my life in so many ways, since the day he first rode in here, and all for the better; lookin' back, I see it clearly. He taught me how to relax and take time for myself, to not take myself so seriously or always try to do everything perfectly; taught me that the world isn't all black and white, and most of all, he taught me the right way to bring Andy up, and what it might have been like for me if any of my other, older brothers had managed to live long enough to grow up. He doesn't always think so, but he's a good man. You can be proud of him."

She was silent for a minute or two, as if she needed time to integrate everything he'd said. Then she said, "I'd wondered how I could ask you."

Slim smiled. "If I had a brother I hadn't seen or heard from in thirteen years, I'd want to know too."

She laughed softly. "All right. Your turn, then. If he's not much for talkin', there must be things you'd like to know..."

"Well, that's true," Slim admitted. He thought for a minute. "He's said there were nine of you, all told. He spoke of three who were gone when—when it happened. Two brothers, and a sister...?"

Francie sighed. "Ben, and Jake, and Sophie. The boys were bound they'd do more with their lives than work somebody else's land; they said they were headin' for California. That was in '51; Ben was sixteen and Jake two years younger."

"He's said he hasn't heard from them since... since before the fire."

She half smiled. "I'm afraid we Harpers never were much for writin' letters. Ma tried to teach us at home—I took to it better than any of the others; she said I had Pa's coloring, but her turn of mind—and Gil's mama, Mrs. Brady, she gave me a lot of help after Johnny and I went to live with them... but the big boys, well, Ben was almost ten when Pa got the Panhandle job; they'd been livin' a pretty nomadic life up to then—Jess was the first of us who wasn't born on the road."

"And Sophie?" Slim prompted.

"She got married in '58—a boy from one of the other ranches. He'd heard there was work down around Mesilla—a lot of Texans settled there, after the second war with Mexico—so they headed that way. Later they moved on to Colorado, and the last I heard they were thinkin' about Montana, or maybe Northern Arizona. We wrote, three or four times a year, but I lost track of her after I faked my own death; I didn't dare let her know I was alive, in case Gil..."

Slim nodded. "So, as far as Jess really has any way to know, you two are all that's left."

"Yes." She was silent a moment. "I asked him if he wanted to come to California with us."

Something caught in Slim's throat. "What did he say?" he asked, keeping his voice level with an effort. He could hardly be angry with Jess if he chose to go with his newly-refound sister, but he knew that to lose him would be like cutting off his own right arm.

"He said..." She paused, as if trying to reconstruct her brother's exact words. "He said, 'I ain't sayin' that I don't sorta wish I could. But you got Ben, Francie; you don't need me. Slim, he needs me. Daisy and Mike, even Mort Corey and the stage line, they need me. And I—I need them. I can't leave 'em, I can't leave this place. This is my home now, Francie, and they're my family, just as sure as if they was blood—maybe more, some ways.' "

"I'm glad," Slim breathed, before he thought, and then, hastily: "That didn't sound the way I meant it to. I know it probably seems selfish—he's your blood kin, maybe the last close kin you have, but—but he's become so much a part of my life, of this ranch—I'm not sure I, we, could bear it without him."

"It's all right," she said quietly. "He was tellin' the truth. It _is_ his home, and he _does_ need it. And you all _are_ his family, the one he chose—the one that chose him. And I'm so glad he has it. It's good that he has brothers again, 'specially. Did you ever realize that he came right in the middle of our family? There were four older than he was, and four younger."

"Now that I think of it, he's mentioned it, but I never stopped to look at it that way," Slim admitted.

"Well, the point is," she went on, "that he had older brothers, and he had younger ones. And now he has an older brother again, and a couple of younger ones. He's needed that so terribly—I don't think even he knew how much." She smiled. "He doesn't need a big sister—not so badly, anyway. And in a way, he's right—now that I have Ben, I don't need Jess half as much as he needs you and the others."

"There's somethin' that puzzles me a little," Slim told her. "The first time he ever mentioned you to me, he called you his 'kid sister.' Later—when he told me about the Bannisters—he said he was fifteen then, and you were sixteen. So why...?"

"I was almost seventeen, actually. I had my birthday a month after he left. We're just twenty-one months apart, Jess and me. Well, he always did think of me that way—used to call me 'li'l sis,' back when he was thirteen, fourteen. Till Julie—she was the youngest, you know—Sophie and I were the only girls in the family. And it seemed like Sophie had all the height and grace and good looks—she had the same colorin' Jess does—and I was just a little rusty-haired mouse, and scrawny as a fence-rail, till I suddenly shot up and filled out after the fire; I'm half amazed Jess even recognized me when we met in Laramie. He was three inches taller than me from the time he turned twelve. I guess that's why."

Slim chuckled. "I've got a notion he was no prize piglet himself. When he first showed up here, our cook—Jonesy, he's with Andy in St. Louis now—said he was about fifteen pounds underweight. He made it his mission in life to feed Jess up some."

"He never did hold weight," Francie agreed. "He burned it up workin'—or just livin'; even when he was little, he couldn't sit still. Always had to be runnin', or ridin', or at least doin' somethin' with his hands. He looks so solid now, I couldn't believe it. But he was always tough as rawhide, too."

"I can testify to that," said Slim with passion. "The first time we ever met—well, the second, actually..." And he went on to tell her about Bud Carlin. "I remember thinkin' at the time, that had to be one of the heaviest fists I was ever in front of. And maybe one of the fastest, too. The first time I got a look at him with his shirt off, I couldn't believe somebody so lean could have such muscles. And that was before Jonesy and Daisy piled three years of good food on him—two, rather; he lost some of what he'd put on when we had to batch it for most of a year."

"You said that was the second time you met? What was the first?" Francie asked.

He told her. She laughed—a full-throated skirl of delight. "Oh, yes, that's my little brother through and through. I see what you mean about his laughin' and jokin'."

"I've often thought," Slim mused, "that he must have had a good solid base to work from. He's said you were poor, but I think what he meant is you didn't have much money."

"You know the difference, then," Francie observed. "Yes, that's about right. Ma always said we had realness in our home, and that was worth more than silver and gold."

"Was it... rough on him, growin' up? I mean physically?" Slim asked, a bit diffident. "If I'm stickin' my nose in where it doesn't belong, tell me and I'll shut up. It's just that... he got on my case so sharp about whippin' Andy, I can't help wonderin' if he was on the receivin' end of that kind of thing, when he was that age."

"Oh, he and Pa butted heads a few times, don't think they didn't," she said. "All the boys did, from the time they got to be eight or ten, 'cause even the ones like Jess who took after the Coopers—Ma's folks—even they had the Harper temper. But Pa always said that temper's a good thing. Metal without it's no use to anyone, he'd say, and the same's true of men. The main thing, he'd say, is that a man should keep in mind it's a valuable possession, and so he needs to keep tight hold on it and not lose any. I've a notion he was prouder they had it than he'd have been if they didn't. As for whippin', we got it when he reckoned we deserved it, but only for the things he saw as real sins—lyin', disrespectin' other folks' property, and forgettin' to close gates, 'cause when you do that stock can get out, and it makes extra work for others. No, Jess didn't get beat, not any more than most high-spirited boys might. You've got to remember, what happened to our family must have made him hate anything that smelled of bigger or stronger people forcin' themselves, or their notions, on weaker ones, even if it was parents on their own kids."

"I guess you'd know if anyone would, bein' closest to his age," said Slim. "It's just that... well, I've never known him to be in doubt about what he can do, whether it's with a gun, or a rope, or horses, or anything you'd care to name... but sometimes—not so much any more, but his first couple of years here especially... he'd talk or act as if he didn't think he was worth very much as a person. I've seen that in kids who've been licked a lot, so I just naturally figured—" He shrugged.

She looked suddenly sad. "That started when he was nine or ten. Our Uncle Cam—I don't know if Jess has talked about him; he was Ma's brother, a Texas Ranger—he'd been up for a visit, and they'd been talkin' about family and old times back in East Texas, and after he left, Jess asked why he'd never met any of his other kin that he'd heard tell about, and why we never got or sent any letters. And Pa said to Ma, 'If he can ask the question, he's old enough to know the answer,' and sat us down—Jess and me; Johnny was too young to understand yet, and Billy and Davy were still babies—and told us about the family he'd come out of, mostly either worthless or lawless, a few... well, let's just say dubious. About how most folks thought the Harpers were no good, and how he'd had to sneak around to court Ma, and how them gettin' married pretty much cut them off from both families. Jess sat there with his eyebrows slanted up, the way they get, you know, and didn't say a word, but afterward he went out and talked to his pony for a couple of hours. He never asked again, but I saw how it changed him. It was like that was the day he started to grow up for real. He couldn't understand why kin would reject kin—family had been the biggest, most permanent thing in his life up to then; he'd probably gotten the idea that it was an unbreakable bond—and it was his first experience with injustice; Pa had always taught us that life may not be fair, but people can choose to be, and they should. Or else maybe it made him feel like _he_ couldn't be worth much either, if he came out of a family like Pa had talked about. From then on it seemed like he was dead-set on provin' he wasn't..." She trailed off, as if not quite sure what word would fit.

"I understand, I think," Slim said quietly.

"It was the hardest day of his life, short of the Bannisters," said Francie. "He kept it tucked down inside, but it hurt him. He's like Pa that way—not just his temper, but the way he gets down on himself; you've seen it, I guess. Pa used to call it 'the black dog'; he said there was Irish blood in our family, way back, and that's where it comes from."

"Daisy's always thought there was an Irishman or two in Jess's family tree," Slim remembered. Then: "I guess with nine of you, there must have been a lot of internal alliances. Was there one of you that he was especially close to?"

"Johnny," she said at once, and Slim remembered that that was who Jess had called the most passionately for, that last terrible night he'd had the fever and nearly died. "Talk about peas in a pod... if it hadn't been for the size difference, you could've taken the two of them for twins. And Johnny looked up to him like your Mike does. Main difference was, Johnny was even wilder than Jess, like I said before. Jess was the only one who could ever really control him, except for Ma, even when Johnny was only little. And Jess knew it. Just around Christmastime, he'd talked to me about takin' Johnny off with him, goin' up to Colorado on a drive, maybe, and seein' if they could get in on all that gold and silver up there. He said he reckoned I'd be just as well pleased to have two less boys to cook and wash for, and if they got lucky they'd see to it we had a place of our own. It wouldn't have to be grand, he said; start with a couple of hundred good range heifers and five or six young bulls and work up, over five years or so, to maybe a thousand head... he was right, too. Cattle in Texas, back then, good two-year-olds, you could buy for six dollars a head; bulls would run maybe eight-fifty... less than $1300, eighty-odd ounces of gold dust, and we could have made a good start toward somethin'..."

"Like this, kind of," Slim supplied. He sighed. "You can't help wondering... what would life have been like for you or me if he'd done it? With his brother for a permanent partner he wouldn't have latched onto Pete Morgan, who had to be the worst choice of a saddlemate he ever made in his life, and in that case he might never have come here. He always says you can't live your life on what-if, but still..."

"It makes you think," she agreed. "It's strange how one little choice, or maybe one piece of bad luck, can lead to so many things. I'm pretty sure what would have happened to _me._ If they'd had the chance to go before the Bannisters showed up, without Johnny and Jess to help me hold them off even for as long as we did, I'd likely have died with Julie and the little boys."

"And either way," said Slim, "odds are I'd never have met him. They say you can't miss what you never had, but I'm not sure that's quite true. From the first month or so he was here, we seemed to fall into a rhythm, at least for the work—which isn't to say we didn't butt heads... it was as if, somehow, I'd been waitin' all along for him to show up. And maybe, in a way, I had. He's only... what would it be?... six, seven months younger than my brother Ben. I don't remember Ben well—I was only three and a half when he died; I couldn't even tell you what he looked like. But I've thought, from time to time, since Jess came, that maybe I'd been missin' what he could have been in my life, if he'd lived."

"So it wasn't just a matter of you bein' good for him," she said. "It went opposites around as well."

"It did. He made such a difference, to this place, to me and Andy... it scares me a little, sometimes, to think of what might have happened a few times, if he hadn't been here. I know I'd have been a very different man without him. It hasn't always been easy," he admitted. "The first year or so, especially, was rough. We had to get used to each other, to learn where to step light and where not to step at all. He seemed to have a lot of doubts—not about what he could do, but about his own worth, about the likelihood of anyone wantin' him around for good, like I told you. I've got a notion it wasn't just that thing about your father's family—I think a lot of people betrayed him or used him or gave up on him, over the years, and it hurt him badly, though he tries not to show it. There were times he couldn't look me in the eye, times he couldn't or wouldn't talk, times I'm sure he expected to hear me tell him to gather his gear and get off the place—times, I almost think, that he tried to provoke me into doin' exactly that, just to get the waitin' over. He was half afraid of it, and half afraid of stayin'—he'd been on his own for so long, never keepin' to one place more than a few winter months, he'd come to need freedom almost as much as he needed air to breathe, and he couldn't see how to make himself fit with us and not lose that, even though there was part of him that really wanted to, from the minute he met Andy, he told me later. I think he was just as bewildered as I was to watch the way our friendship grew; we were so different from each other. And his past kept poppin' up—old friends, old enemies, people he owed debts to, and... others," thinking of Laurel DeWalt and the Hamry kid. "But these last couple of years, he seems to've settled, to've admitted to himself that this is where he belongs, his home, and we're his family, just as he told you. When he bought his Sunday outfit—his brocade vest and black jacket, his solid silver hatband—and had a pair of dress boots made to his measure... I knew then that he planned to stay. And I'm so glad of it... I can't tell you how much. He's the big brother, or maybe the young uncle, that Mike never had, the son Daisy lost in the war... and the best thing that ever happened to me. It's too bad that you, and he, had to lose your father, your home, the 'littl'uns,' as he calls them, to make that possible... and maybe I'm bein' selfish, but... but I'm very thankful he ended up here."

"I am too," she said quietly. "For his sake."

Slim suddenly drew in a breath. "We're soundin' pretty gloomy, aren't we? My mother always used to quote that verse in the Bible about 'man that is born of woman,' but Pa would say that good can come out of evil, and I guess in our case, in Jess's case, it has..." Abruptly: "There's somethin' maybe you can explain to me. You saw that rockin' chair by the fireplace? Jess sort of laid claim to it before he'd been here more than a month. He always sits in it if it's available. He seems really attached to it. I've often wondered why. Doesn't seem he'd have had much opportunity to enjoy rockers in ten years on the trail and in the army—in two armies."

Francie chuckled. "No, but I'm not surprised. Ma had one; it came out of her bedroom in Cherokee County. Did Jess ever tell you that she and Pa had to elope? She told us so many times about how determined she was to take it with her. Well, you know how it is with elopements; the girl usually just takes a suitcase or two, her favorite clothes, her valuables if she has any—jewelry and such. But not Ma, no, sir. Ma meant to have that rocker with her come hell or high water."

Slim had a sudden mental image of Jess's mother lowering the chair out her window on a rope. "How did they manage it?" he asked.

"Well, Pa had a wagon—not a big one, only about a one-ton, but enough for the little he had in the way of worldly goods, and for camp gear and supplies and such. Ma was supposed to go with her folks and Uncle Cam—he was twenty-two then, he'd been a Ranger four years—to a dance at the Smiths' place, the family her sister Margaret married into eventually; in fact, it came out later that one of the Smith boys had been plannin' to ask her to marry him that night. She begged off with a headache, and after they were safe away she sneaked down and undid the bolt on the door, and Pa just walked upstairs—well, tiptoed upstairs, so's not to wake the younger kids—and carried the chair down while she took care of her bags." Francie sighed. "They carried that chair with them for ten years; it was almost the only piece of real furniture they had. Ma was so proud of it... we all of us got rocked in it when we were little, and even not so little, if we needed some ma-time, some comfortin' or somebody to listen. She was good at that... and Jess wasn't quite fourteen when she died... I've got a notion that chair makes him think of her, and home, and—in spite of what he's told you—of what might have been."

Slim nodded thoughtfully. "I can understand that. When Jonesy was here, seein' him play his guitar for Andy used to make me think of my mother—she played too, they used to do duets..." He looked around at her. "Francie... you and Ben, you wouldn't consider... staying? There's still plenty of good land to be had around here, and I know all the cattlemen—I'll find you a good deal on stock, or maybe Ben would like to settle in town, start some kind of business... Mort Corey's a decent, human kind of peace officer, he doesn't make trouble for a man tryin' to leave his past behind... Jess has made a good place for himself in these parts, a respected name, and Ben could too. Jess would be so glad, if you could—"

She sighed. "I sort of wish I could say yes. We even talked about it, Ben and me. But he's never been to California; there'd be a lot less chance, out there, of him runnin' into someone who'd known him from before... you said yourself Jess has had trouble with old enemies here, think what it might be like... he'd feel he had to jump in, Ben bein' kin..."

"I understand," he said quietly. "I guess, come down to it, I knew you'd say that, but I had to try."

Francie was silent for a moment. "It's strange, isn't it?" she said. "I spend most of thirteen years worryin' about my little brother because he had a name as a gunfighter, and nine of those years along I get married to a man who followed the same trade. In many ways they're a lot alike—Ben is so much gentler than his reputation would have him... I reckon he never had to deal with the kinds of things Jess did..." She sighed. "He's so lucky, to've found you... you're what he's needed, what he's been lookin' for... partner, saddlemate, brother... someone who thinks, not of one of you first, but of both of you together..." Her voice caught, just a bit, and Slim knew, from listening to Jess one night on the porch, not long after he'd first come here, that there were tears in her throat, if not in her eyes.

"Somethin' just occurred to me," he told her. "If Jess is my brother—and I've felt he was for at least these last couple of years—and your brother too, that makes you my sister. I never had a sister—at least, none that lived. Would you mind if I thought of you that way?"

"I'd like it," she said, almost in a whisper. "I'd like it a lot. I had big brothers too, remember."

He held out his arms, and she came into his embrace. It wasn't like holding another man's wife. It was like just what he'd said—sharing a very special moment with a sister.

"Slim?"

"Hm?"

"What's your real name?"

"Matthew Jacob, after my father. Why?"

"Matthew. That's good. There weren't any Matthews in our family. My first son will have to be Young Ben, of course. But if there's another... he'll be Jesse Matthew, after his uncles in Wyoming."

His voice was warm when he answered. "Jess and I will be honored—to be his namesakes and his uncles, and his godfathers if you'd like us to."

The front door suddenly creaked, and a familiar gravelly voice called from the shadows under the porch roof: "Francie? Slim? Where'd you all drop to?"

Quickly they pulled apart. "Over here, pard," Slim responded.

Jess came down off the step and strode over to join them. "What're you up to?"

"Oh, nothin' much, little brother," Francie told him. "I've just been supplyin' your partner with all kinds of embarrassin' stories about you." She giggled at the astonished look that washed over his face, then: "Is Ben all right?"

"He's just turnin' in," Jess said. "I reckon he got out of condition in prison... take him a while to strengthen up. If you could take your time goin' to California—"

"I just told her they could have our big wagon," Slim said. "We won't really need it till it gets time to start stockin' up for winter, and by then we'll have sold our cattle and be able to afford a new one."

Jess brightened immediately. "Thanks, pard. I'd been thinkin' about askin' you—it's good it come to you first."

"They're family, Jess. Just like you," Slim replied. "What else would I do? But Ben's right, it's gettin' late, and the day starts early, which I imagine you know, Francie." He offered her his arm.

"Hey," Jess objected, "that's _my_ sister you're playin' gallant with."

"She's got another arm," Slim said. "Like she's got two brothers, now."

Jess stared at them in disbelief for a moment, then his face lit with joy. All three abreast, they crossed the yard toward the welcoming yellow glow of the ranchhouse lights.

-30-


End file.
